Call to get best deal on milk

Jul 23 2009 by Naomi Dunning, Chester Chronicle

“IF you want good, fresh, healthy local milk you will have to pay the price,” say Cheshire farmers.

The cost of production is going up but prices for milk are lower than ever and industry bosses are warning the industry is at breaking point.

John Allwood a Huntington dairy farmer supplies his milk to Tesco as part of their Tesco Sustainable Group of Farmers scheme, where the supermarket works out how much they think it will cost the farmer to produce milk and pay them accordingly.

John said: “This is a very enviable system, which takes into consideration how much it is going to cost to produce the milk.

“We, however, don’t get any retrospective pay, so if it has cost more than predicted we don’t get any extra.

“I know a lot of other farmers want other supermarkets to take on this system to get a more sustainable price.

“But we don’t just want to be sustainable, we want to be profitable.”